Behold there came four chariots out from between two mountains
The four chariots
The general meaning of this vision is very clear.
The enemies of the Church shall be punished, is the motto of the picture, and the purport of the vision. The immediate application of the truth was to the existing circumstances of the Jewish Church, but it contains a general proposition or law of the Divine procedure that is now in fulfilment, and will so continue until the restitution of all things spoken of by the holy prophets since the world began. Following the preceding vision, which denounced wrath on the Jews, it declares that after the Jews have been punished, God will destroy their enemies, who will also be the enemies of the Church. Now, as the threatened punishment of the Jews is not yet completed, so this punishment which was to follow that completion is also incomplete, and the main fulfilment yet to come. We have therefore in this vision an instance of what has been called the continuous fulfilment of prophecy. This takes place when the prophecy is not so much a simple prediction of facts, as the annunciation of a great principle of Divine procedure, in the garb of existing and well-known facts, but yet equally applicable to other facts all along the history of God’s dealings with man. Thus the most abstract and formulated statement of the essence of this vision is, the enemies of the Church shall be punished. Its immediate application was to Babylon and Egypt, the existing representatives of the ancient enmity of the serpent’s seed, but this application is of course a single one, that does not exclude the future examples of this principle of the Divine government that may and must arise. This is wholly different from the old double sense of prophecy, and is a most obvious and reasonable canon of interpretation. How striking the fulfilment of this threatening, when we remember the circumstances under which it was made. Could the haughty nobles of Babylon, in the gorgeousness of its magnificence and the pride of its power, have heard the threatening of this obscure Jew, amidst the ruins of Jerusalem, with what derision and contempt would they have treated the threat! The anathema that was so feebly uttered against the mightiest and richest city in the world, to the eye of sense seemed like the ravings of lunacy. Yet that feeble whisper was the uttered voice of Jehovah, and the elements of ruin in their remotest lurking place heard the summons, and began to come forth. Slowly and silently did they come up to this dread work, and yet surely and resistlessly, until the glory of these high palaces was dimmed, and the magnificence of these gardens and temples was covered, and now the winds whistle through the reeds of the Euphrates, where Babylon then sat in her pride; and loneliness, desolation, and death are stationed there the sentinel witnesses of the truth that His word returns not to Him void, that His Spirit is quieted in the land of the north. The same is true of Egypt, and later on of Greece and Rome. So it will be with guilty and godless Europe. Learn--
1. That the history of the world is all arranged and conducted in reference to the destinies of the Church, and the agencies that control that history go forth from the seat of the Church’s great head, the unseen, temple.
2. God has in operation every species of agency, human and angelic, animate and inanimate, needful for the accomplishment of His purposes, and will send these forth at the proper time. Political changes and revolutions are only the moving of the shadow on the earthly dial plate that marks the mightier motions going forward in the heavens. (T. V. Moore, D D.)
The supremacy of God
The entire vision was designed to teach a great general lesson--the lesson of the universal supremacy and superintendence of the “God of Israel” over all the agencies of nature, and all the varying movements of progress or retrogression, of prosperity and adversity, of peace and war, amongst the nations; and to teach it with a special application to themselves, as His chosen people, and to those adjoining or more distant countries by which their condition had been, or might hereafter be, beneficially or injuriously affected. It called upon them to put their trust in the wisdom, power, and love of their own Jehovah,--the governor among the nations;--in one word, to “have faith in God.” Let us learn the lesson. Amidst all the convulsions and revolutions that are agitating Europe, let us not only acknowledge but rejoice in the supremacy of the infinitely wise, and good, and mighty. All “the winds” are His. He “holds them in His fist.” The zephyr and the hurricane are alike His agents. All influences--in every department of creation, and in the hearts and wills and words and actions of men of every kindred and tongue and people and nation, are under His absolute control. “None can stay His hand, or say unto Him, What doest Thou? Let us trust in Him, own Him, pray to Him,--deprecating, on behalf of our country, and of our guilty world, merited wrath,--and imploring, especially, that all events may result in glory to His name. (Ralph Wardlaw, D. D.)
God’s government of the world
This is the last in the series of visions, which amount in all to seven, during that one night. This is not more easy of interpretation than the preceding ones. The objects which were now revealed to the prophet’s vision are various and strange.
(1) He sees four chariots. It does not say whether they were chariots of war bearing the warrior out to battle, or home in triumph, or whether they were chariots used for private or public conveyances.
(2) He saw these four chariots proceeding from two mountains. These were not mountains of earth or stone, but mountains of brass; mountains, therefore, having peculiar solidity and strength.
(3) He saw these chariots drawn by horses of different colour. I take the vision to illustrate God’s government of the world, and it illustrates four facts concerning that government.
I. Variety. This is suggested by the colour of the steeds that bear on the chariots of His plans. The “red horses,” emblem of war and bloodshed. The “black,” emblem of calamity, distress, and mourning. The white, emblem of gladness and prosperity. The “grisled” and “bay,” or piebald, a mixture of events, prosperity and adversity, friendship and bereavement, sorrow and joy, etc. Has not this variety characterised the providence that is over man from the beginning until this hour? It is not only seen in every page of the history of nations and Churches and families, but in the history of individuals. The experience of every man is more changeable than the weather. There is a constant alternation,--the red, the black, the white, the mixed. These changes are useful
1. They break the monotony of life. They tend to keep the heart of humanity on the alert. There is but little opportunity for moral sleep.
2. They create a desire for a state of certainty. They prompt a search for a “city that hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.” This is not our rest.
II. Immutability. These chariots move between two “mountains of brass.” Though they are borne by a variety of steeds, and move rapidly towards every point of the compass, and bear a variety of events wherever they go, they are overshadowed and hedged in by the immutable in mountains of brass. God’s immutable counsels of decrees keep all the motions and commotions, all the convulsions and revolutions of the world in their place. As the ocean amidst all its ebbings and flowings, rage and fury, is bound to obey the moon, which remains serenely settled in her orbit, so all the agitations of the earth are bound to obey the immutable decrees of Heaven. Thank God! that in this changing world of ours there are mountains of brass, things that cannot be shaken. “All flesh is grass, but the word of our God shall stand forever.”
III. Universality. These chariots, borne by these varied coloured steeds, rolled towards every point of the globe, some to the north and some to the south. They walked “to and fro through the earth.” Not a spot unvisited or ignored. God’s providence embraces all, matter and mind, great and small, good and evil. Hence we should bow with resignation under all our sorrows, and shout with gratitude in all our enjoyments.
IV. Supremacy. “These are the four spirits of the heavens, which go forth from standing before the Lord of all the earth.” He is at the head of all. No evil spirit moves without His permission and control; no good spirit without His inspiration and guidance. He is the Lord of all the earth. How great must He be who manages all things! (Homilist.)
These are the four spirits of the heavens--
Four spirits of the heavens
Eminent interpreters translate the words “celestial spirits,” and thus present us at once, in our own customary theology, with angels. There is difficulty here, however. In the first place, “spirits of the heavens” is a very unwonted designation for angels in Scripture. I know not that it has a parallel. And secondly, if angels are intended, how come we to have four? Their number is “ten thousand times ten thousand”; and unless they are mentioned in connection with something else that leads and limits to the number four, it is difficult, by any analogy, to account for it. Let me illustrate the remark from another passage--“And after these things I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree” (Revelation 7:1). Here we have “four angels.” But we at once see why they are four. They are, in the vision, employed in “holding the four winds of the earth.” Now the four winds, from the four cardinal points--understood as representing and embracing all the intermediate points, and thus signifying the winds in general--was a style of expression familiar to the ancients as ourselves. The word rendered “spirits,” as most if not all of you are aware, signifies also winds. The question then is, whether what are called “the four winds of the earth,” in the Book of Revelation, be not the same as what are here called the “four spirits,” or winds, “of the heavens.” I am strongly tempted to think that we have, in this vision, one symbol, or emblem, explained by another. “The four winds” are an emblem--a most natural and appropriate one--of all the powers and agencies by which the earth can be affected; especially agencies of judgment--of wars and desolations, arising from the contending elements of human passions and Satanic malignity. (Ralph Wardlaw, D. D.)